It’s been quite a while since I read a Maigret, but the start of the new year seemed to be the right time to return to this master detective.  Sadly, this book, number 27 on the list of 67 Maigret novels, was situated in New York rather than Paris, so I didn’t have the usual pleasure of using Google Maps to follow the Chief Inspector around Paris.

Actually, in this book Jules Maigret was no longer the Chief Inspector of the Flying Squad at Quai des Orfeves, having retired to his country home in Meung-sur-Loire, a small town 15 km west of Orleans.  There, one day, he is approached by a young man who identifies himself as the son of John Maura, a wealthy man living in NYC who the son feels is in danger.  Somewhat strangely, Maigret agrees to take an ocean liner to New York to help young Jean find out what is going on with Dad.  In NYC, Maigret with the assistance of an FBI agent who had spent time with him in Paris, uncovers a 30 year old murder by his usual methods of poking around, staying quiet, and slowly immersing himself in the life and mind of the major characters.  The NYC underworld figures prominently as several characters are killed, but as usual, Maigret emerges with the solution and quietly returns to his country home.

The book is perhaps most interesting because of a relatively long section which describes Maigret’s methods for solving cases.  He tells a NYPD lieutenant that “I try never to form an idea about a case before it’s closed.”  Simenon goes on to describe Maigret as having ‘jumped into the deep end’ after spending “days, sometime weeks, floundering along in a case, doing what there was to do, no more, giving orders, gathering information about this or that person, chasing after the truths one is hunting, waiting for the pure and simple truth to arrive on its own”

One of the treats of the reissuing of the entire Maigret series by Penguin Classics are the blurbs in the first few pages of each book.  Faulkner is quoted as saying “I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov”, and Gide who wrote, “The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature.”  And finally, John Banville, who is a superb mystery writer himself, wrote of the Maigret books that they  were “extraordinary masterpieces of the 20th C.”  Not bad recommendations.

Happy to be back with Jules, and looking forward to the next adventure in “Maigret’s Holiday” from 1947.